Walchem’s WIND & Fresh Produce Processing & Disinfection

WIND & Fresh Produce Processing

Produce growers, processors and shippers face an ever increasing requirement to assure the sanitation of their products before reaching the marketplace. Walchem’s WIND system controls the injection of citric acid and chlorine into the wash process to maintain pH and disinfection levels in the produce wash water.

The WIND controller also monitors wash water temperature and provides the customer with automatic data reports detailing all process variable information (min, max, mean) as well as local and remote alarm annunciation. Accurate data collection is an extremely important part of the fruit and vegetable sanitizing process as it helps ensure that the produce is free of any biological contamination prior to reaching the packaging process. The WIND control system allows the plant operators to monitor the process at all times over the customer’s LAN. The Modbus TCP/IP communication feature is also enabled at this facility to permit data flow directly from the WIND controller to the plant DCS. Enabling the Modbus feature permits the customer to independently collect and archive valuable process data.

Best Solution

There are other companies that manufacture controllers for this type of application but very few of them address data acquisition and online monitoring without involving a third party or a separate data collection device or communication module. In this case, the customer recognized immediately that the WIND system addresses all of the elements required to help maintain Sanitation Operating Procedures and Good Agricultural Practices by providing accurate chemical feed, data collection, auto-reporting, alarm annunciation and online monitoring of the process. Simply put, the WIND does it all! It not only controls the sanitation process but records and collects system data. Ease of use is another reason why our equipment was selected for this application. The customer acknowledges that the WIND controller is a perfect fit for this application and for this market in general.